PITTSBURGH, PA — The Brick Consortium, Inc. announced that five companies have joined on as inaugural members: Carrier, Clockworks Analytics, Johnson Controls, Mapped, and Schneider Electric. These commercial members join academic members who hail from Carnegie Mellon University, the Colorado School of Mines, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at San Diego.
The consortium, through the Brick schema, addresses an important industry and societal need by helping make data of the built environment interoperable. The Brick Schema provides a common mapping and interchange format for data from sources such as the HVAC and building automation systems, lighting, electrical, access control, fire protection, occupancy, and other common building systems. The consortium provides governance for the Brick Schema specifications and is developing tooling, conformance testing protocols, and a repository of reference models and canonical use cases. The consortium also funds the research of work related to Brick and the built environment and works to evangelize the use of the Brick schema.
“We are excited to have these industry leaders joining the Brick Consortium and contributing to the development of the Brick schema,” said Carnegie Mellon University Professor Yuvraj Agarwal.
“The Consortium will provide the community assurances that Brick has a long-term future and can be a contributing technology for improving the efficiency and comfort of buildings,” added Carnegie Mellon University Professor Mario Bergés.
Both Agarwal and Bergés are Brick Consortium Steering Committee members.
The Brick Consortium members and other interested open source contributors are developing the next release of the Brick schema, version 1.3. The consortium expects to complete development this month and after a review process, the members will approve the final release of version 1.3 by February 2022. Highlights of the 1.3 release include official integration with realtime data sources such as BACnet and timeseries databases, a more expressive model for chillers and other heat pumps, and features designed to make interoperability with future standards easier, such as the ASHRAE 223P standard currently under development.
